


Rose in a Fisted Glove

by speakpirate



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/F, Mentions of Emison, Mentions of Vandermarin, Rare Pair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 16:56:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6248062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakpirate/pseuds/speakpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It doesn’t mean anything, Emily tells herself sternly.  So what if Mona Vanderwaal has emerged from a cocoon of braids and glasses and bulky sweaters to be Hanna’s new BFF.  She looks at Hanna like you look at your friend.  Completely platonic.  Just like Emily used to look at Alison.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rose in a Fisted Glove

**Author's Note:**

> _I don't know that I would have ever come up with the idea to write a story that paired Emily and Mona like this if it hadn't been for a discussion with lco123 that made me think about the parallels between Emison and Vandermarin in a new way. This fic is the direct result of that conversation, and I'm grateful for the inspiration!_
> 
>  
> 
> **Spoilers through Burn This.**

Emily is standing next to Spencer’s locker, nodding along but only half-listening as Spence complains about how they won’t let her take AP Calculus until she’s at least a junior. Emily studies hard, because her parents expect it, but she signs up for whatever classes the guidance counselor tells her to, whatever her mom thinks might look good to colleges. She did choose French instead of Spanish, but that was just so she could be in the same section as Alison. 

She feels a cold swoop of worry in her stomach, a feeling she’s getting used to whenever Alison’s name comes to mind--which is to say, every time she sees Ali’s picture smiling from a poster in a shop window, or picks up her cell phone and scrolls through the contacts, or carefully sits next to an empty desk in all of her classes, just in case Ali walks back in unexpectedly.

Spencer stops talking suddenly, right as she was hitting her stride in a long rant about Logarithmic Differentiation, and Emily is pulled out of her own thoughts enough to realize that the whole hallway is different than it was thirty seconds ago, the air is charged, everyone is staring - like they used to stare at Alison - only now it’s Hanna Marin striding down the corridor like it’s her personal catwalk. Emily hears a freshman on her left mutter, “Is she back?” and it’s no wonder, Hanna’s new look is Alison’s old one, right down to the shade of her lipstick, the color of her nail polish. Emily’s brain is stuck between two gears, her mouth opening with surprise at how hot Hanna undeniably looks while the rest of her face crinkles with disgust over how ghoulish it is.

“It’s like she took a Missing Persons flier to the salon,” Spencer says.

But Emily isn’t looking at Hanna anymore, her gaze has slid off Hanna’s nail polish onto the girl holding Hanna’s hand--maybe she’s new here, a transfer student from private school or something, with an expensive wardrobe and a sleek curtain of dark hair framing a face that looks vaguely familiar. Emily is tracing the shape of the new girl’s eyes when she sees a look flash across her face that’s half hungry admiration, half raw desire. It lasts less than a fraction of a second before her features are smoothed down, restored to bland perfection, but it’s enough. 

Emily looks down, pretends to rummage through her bag for a pencil. Her face feels hot, and she’s grateful that Spencer is too busy watching Hanna stalk around the corner to notice.

It doesn’t mean anything, Emily tells herself sternly. So what if Mona Vanderwaal has emerged from a cocoon of braids and glasses and bulky sweaters to be Hanna’s new BFF. She looks at Hanna like you look at your friend. Completely platonic. Just like Emily used to look at Alison. 

\------

It’s the first day of junior year, and Emily is sitting next to Aria in Mr. Fitz’s English class. She’s tapping her pencil nervously against the desk, trying _not_ to think about Maya St. Germain. She’s just friendly, Emily tells herself. No way is she flirting.

She looks over at Aria, hoping to copy her notes and refocus on whatever Mr. Fitz is saying. But Aria isn’t taking notes, she’s busy doodling hearts in the margin of her notebook. Like Emily used to do in French, sometimes.

Emily is distracted from this train of thought when she catches a quick flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. Mona and Hanna, passing a note back and forth, giggling quietly. Hanna flashes Mona her brightest smile, pulls out a pink fluffy pen and starts scribbling a response. 

Emily notices the way Mona’s fingertips brush Hanna’s when she passes the note back. She remembers the day Alison asked her to tie her friendship bracelet, the ghost of her own fingers delicately grazing Alison’s wrist.

Emily frowns.

\------

It’s months later, and everything is different, even though nothing has changed. Emily’s friends are her friends again. Alison is still gone, even though Emily could swear she felt Ali’s lips against hers the day she was pulled out of that barn. She knows what it feels like to kiss girls for real now. Maya. Paige. Samara. For a carbon monoxide induced hallucination, Alison’s kiss had the exact same spark that it used to, powerful and distinct. 

They’ve just spent the day doing ridiculous Truth Up exercises, but at least they inspired her to apologize to Mona for how she treated her back when Alison was in charge. Mona barely seems to remember who she was before, or maybe she’d just rather not think about it, she’s reinvented herself so completely.

Emily wasn’t expecting anything in return, but she’s tired of feeling bad, tired of atoning for all their past sins. And she feels a weird kind of sympathy for Mona. She knows how rarely Mona gets time with Hanna these days, they share a bedroom after all.

So she’s shocked when Mona launches a scheme on her behalf, a plan to force the school to let her back on the swim team. Emily hesitates at the idea of blackmailing the Vice Principal, but Mona’s insistent. The ends are going to justify the means, even if the means include breaking into his office and stealing evidence from his computer. It’ll work like a charm, Mona assures her. They’ll get what they want. They’ll never get caught. The perfect crime.

And it does work, just like she promised. Mona stands there, grinning at their shared secret accomplishment. The whole thing reminds Emily so much of Alison, especially when Mona turns kind of sweet, asking what she should wear to the next swim meet.

Mona’s being so friendly, Emily thinks maybe they can be friends for real. And Mona did her a huge favor, maybe she owes her something in return.

Emily turns back to Mona, her hand on the doorknob.

“Maybe it’s none of my business,” she says. “I mean, it’s not, really. At all. But - you should tell Hanna.”

Mona’s smile is bright, but her eyes go hard. “Tell her what?”

Emily doesn’t look away. She’s not intimidated. “How you feel. I never got the chance to tell Alison the right way. I wish I had.”

Mona’s voice is so cold it sends a shiver down Emily’s spine. “You’re right about one thing,” she says, her voice sharp as a knife. “It is _none_ of your business.” Mona throws a shoulder against Emily as she walks past her out of the office. 

A month later, they find out that Mona is ‘A’.

Emily’s stomach twists into sick knots. 

Hanna is dazed, shocked, disbelieving.

But Emily gets it, as warped and disturbing as it is. 

Mona was trying to tell Hanna. 

She just couldn’t find the right way. 

\----- 

Emily is lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. She doesn’t feel like doing homework. She doesn’t feel like doing anything, really. If she stays still enough, the pain is less. Feeling nothing is better than feeling the aching void that’s been her constant companion since Maya’s death. She loved Alison. She loved Maya. She stares at the ceiling and pictures their tombstones.

There are heavy footsteps on the stairs. Someone coming to check on her. They always do, ever since she got back from Haiti. Everyone wants to ask how she’s doing, but no one really wants to know. She doesn’t bother turning her head towards the door until she smells cologne, realizes that it’s not Spencer or Aria hovering in the doorway, but Caleb.

“Is Hanna here?” he asks, even though it’s obvious she’s not.

Emily doesn’t answer, just raises an eyebrow questioningly.

“She just, she said she’d be here. After school.”

“She’s not.”

“Do you know -” he hesitates, then continues. “Do you know if she’s really seeing Dr. Sullivan again?”

“You should ask her.”

Caleb looks completely miserable. He comes in uninvited and sits on the edge of Emily’s bed. She’s actually never had a boy in her bedroom before. Not even Ben. But now here’s Hanna’s boyfriend, tall and scruffy and completely out of place.

“I don’t want to bother you,” he says. “I know things have been really rough, ever since --” He lets the thought dangle, putting his head in his hands and leaving Emily to fill in the conversational blank. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure story where every answer is death. 

“But I’m _worried_ about her,” he continues. “She’s lying to me. She’s sneaking around. I wish she’d just tell me, if - there’s another guy.” He looks at Emily, and his eyes are brimming with tears. “I wish someone would just tell me.”

He should know better than this, Emily thinks. After everything they’ve been through, Emily would chop off her own hand with a rusty axe before she’d share one of Hanna’s secrets. 

“She hasn’t said anything to me,” Emily tells him. 

Caleb nods and takes a deep breath as he stands up. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have asked you. And I’m sorry about Maya.”

He gets as far as the top of the stairs before Emily calls after him.

“Caleb!”

He turns, and his eyes are scared and desperate and sad.

“I don’t think it’s a new guy.” 

Caleb’s face is a mix of surprise and relief. “Thanks,” he says, gratefully. “Thanks a lot.”

And then he’s gone. Sweet and oblivious. 

Hanna’s visiting Mona.

Emily sighs and stares at the ceiling.

\-----

Mona’s back at school and everyone’s nerves are jangly. 

Emily watches Hanna eat three cupcakes in a row before she gently takes the box away.

“I still don’t understand,” Hanna says. “Why she did all those things. I thought she was my friend.”

“She was your friend,” Spencer says firmly. “But she was also crazy. Like, batshit crazy, Han.”

“But she wasn’t always like that,” Hanna protests. “Something must have happened.”

“Alison happened,” Aria points out.

Emily feels the little jolt she still sometimes get whenever Alison’s name comes up unexpectedly, then imagines Alison herself laughing playfully at the others, how they’re still not in on the secret.

\----

Hanna’s completely freaked out about the hard drive that Mona stole from Wilden’s car. She’s sure Mona’s going to use it to blackmail her. Or her Mom. 

“Do you see this?” Hanna asks, gesturing dramatically at the mirror in Emily’s bedroom. “I’m getting bags under my eyes! Bags!”

Emily watches Hanna put on a big show of friendship for Mona, a show she suspects is more real than Hanna herself even knows, and a hundred times more dangerous.

“Don’t pretend with her,” Emily tells Hanna. “Tell her what you want.”

“That’ll never work,” Hanna says glumly.

It would, though. Emily knows it in her bones. It’s like a proof of two like circles in geometry. Emily would never be able to say no to Alison. 

Emily doesn’t say any of this, because Hanna is her friend. And if she still doesn’t know, after all this time, it’s because she doesn’t want to.

“You could try,” Emily suggests, instead.

Two weeks later, Mona marches into the police station and confesses to Wilden’s murder to get Ashley off the hook.

Of course she does.

\----

Sometimes when Emily feels a twinge in her shoulder, as she’s pulling her arm through the sleeve of a sweatshirt or watching a much slower swimmer win the 500 meter relay, she thinks about how she got hurt. Her whole swimming career, her whole future, gone because she and Aria ran back to save Mona.

She remembers what Alison used to say about Mona. 

Ignore it and it’ll go away.

It still hurts.

\----

Alison is alive. It’s like a dream, impossibly surreal. She’s standing right here in Spencer’s backyard and they’re all looking to her for answers as if she never left.

She doesn’t give them any, not really. But she looks over her shoulder at Emily in a way that makes Emily’s heart leap like they’re both fourteen again. All of her love and confusion comes roaring back, like it never went anywhere. Like it’s been hibernating in a cave, aging in a wine cellar all this time. It’s flooding through her veins, wild and potent and completely untamed.

She takes her eyes off Alison for one second, and she’s gone. There’s nothing there but the wind, the leaves, Ezra’s flashlight beam cutting through the dark.

Emily stands there feeling unhinged. She stares at the spot where Alison was standing. It looks unremarkable. A patch of grass. She thinks of Alison’s grave, remembers her funeral.

The image of Mona’s face when there wasn’t enough room for her in the pew.

\----

Once Alison is back for real, for good, for better or for worse - she complicates things with a dramatic tale of kidnap, a demeanor that swings wildly between convenient remorse and continued manipulation.

Emily tries to keep her distance, she does. She thinks about Jason and his drinking, Spencer and her pills. She lies to every single person who asks her how she feels.

“I’m still trying to figure it out,” she says. She doesn’t think anyone really believes her. 

It’s like standing outside in the middle of a downpour, soaked to the skin, trying to figure out if it’s raining.

\----

Emily dodges Alison’s calls. Tries not to meet her eyes. Ignores the way it feels whenever she has to be in a room with her, the way the air is so charged, it’s practically vibrating. Emily imagines her heart as one of those chained up electrical boxes, labeled as dangerous, high voltage, the ones that make your hair stand up if you get too close, will zap you to death if you reach inside.

Alison seems puzzled, unsure. She reaches out like maybe Emily is what she’s secretly wanted this whole time. 

Emily refuses, for one second, to let herself believe that could be true.

Until the night Alison sits on her bed, gives her the big eyes, tells her those kisses weren’t just for practice.

The next day, there’s no afterglow. Only the rattle of Emily’s fear. 

She knows exactly how much she loves Alison.

Too much.

Which means, essentially, more than Alison loves her.

\----

Alison is holding her hand in front of everyone, calmly, like it’s no big deal. Like they could maybe do this. Be a regular couple. Who have dates where they watch breaking news about murders, listen for sirens in the distance. Go to movies and then watch houses explode next door.

When she watches the video of Alison slapping Mona, hears the crack of Ali’s hand against Mona’s cheek, something inside her goes still.

No more pretending. It’s time to face facts.

Mona is what happens when Alison slices someone open.

Mona is what happens when you love someone so much it turns everything dark, twists up your heart like a tree in the forest.

Emily wants to believe it could never happen. Not to her.

Emily’s gotten good at lying to other people.

She’s gotten worse at lying to herself.

She looks at the reflection of her and Ali in the window, remembers Hanna walking down the hall with Mona a lifetime ago. Hanna stepping into Ali’s heels, and Mona holding her hand, a darker shadow.

Emily drops Alison’s hand. Stands up and leaves when Ali tries to kiss her.

\----

Mona is dead.

Alison might have done it.

Emily throws up in Hanna’s bathroom. Wonders if Alison did it for her.

\----

It’s safer to love Alison when she’s innocent. 

Also when she’s behind bars.

\----

Emily hates everything about the Doll House. She hates being watched. She hates being a doll. She hates the mind fuck experiments. Maybe most of all, she hates the nightmares.

Every night, she goes to sleep in a room that’s pretending to be her room. And every night she dreams about Mona, sitting at the piano, calmly wearing a mask of Alison’s face. Sometimes Mona turns into Alison and kisses her, sometimes Alison turns into Mona and stabs her in the heart. Sometimes Alison looks like Hanna and breaks Mona’s neck. Sometimes Hanna looks like Alison and punches a hole in Mona’s chest, carves her heart out with a spoon.

Once, she dreams that she’s watching Alison kiss Cece Drake, but then it’s Mona instead of Alison, and they’re still kissing, but also choking each other to death.

Emily gets to the point where she’d rather do the shock test than go to sleep.

\----

Once they’re finally out of there, Emily plans for things to be different.

She just has to live through the next few months. 

Forget about Alison. Forget about Mona. 

Forget about underground torture bunkers.

Date someone boring, maybe.

Of course it doesn’t work. Why would it?

\----

Emily is sleeping in late, even though she’s not so much sleeping as just not getting out of bed. She’d be missing her morning classes if she hadn’t dropped out last semester. Her tank top is sticky with spilled drinks and sweat.

Her cell lights up, a picture of her mom’s face lighting up the screen. A picture from before. When she used to smile.

Pam isn’t calling for any particular reason. Just to check in, chat with her daughter. Emily paints a happy picture, full of colorful lies, all about her classes and her friends and a completely made up bowl-a-thon she’s volunteering for. She wonders if she should throw in a puppy frolicking under a rainbow for good measure.

Pam is delighted at how well Emily’s doing. Proud of her for thriving in the face of adversity.

“I saw your friend Mona yesterday,” her mom says.

Emily hopes that her silence will be enough to discourage her mom from saying whatever comes next.

“I ran into her at Spruce Nursery. They had the prettiest shade of purple impatiens, I couldn’t resist. She was buying star lilies for her mother.”

“Huh,” Emily says.

“She came by later and helped me weed the garden enough to plant,” Pam continues. “I told her she must be real lonely, if she’s hanging out with old ladies like me for company.”

“How’s Alison?” Emily asks.

“I wouldn’t know, honey. I never see her.” 

\----

And then they’re back in Rosewood, all of them. Everyone is doing well. Everyone is happy. Everyone, Emily thinks, is lying. But it’s only for a few days, enough time to take a few pictures, do a little perjury. Just for old times sake.

Alison is there, her arms folded, wary. Emily sees the way the psychiatrist keeps tilting his head towards her, figures they’re probably sleeping together. That’s probably how she got a hearing for Charlotte so fast. Classic.

Mona’s there too, acting new and improved. Well put together. Medicated. Healthy. Looking like the kind of person who’ll tell you about their workout plan and carefully balanced fad diet at the drop of a hat.

Emily sits in front of the judge and lies for Alison. 

Mona has a small breakdown, runs out of the room in a panic. Her eyes flicker to Hanna as she hurries out the door, looking for comfort or friendship or recognition. Hanna doesn’t notice. Emily does.

Some things never change.

\----

Emily is still in shock from being almost murdered by a monster truck when Hanna’s cell pings. 

Emily’s own phone is smashed to pieces, it’s in the afterworld, a place beyond texts.

“Jesus _Fucking_ Christ,” Hanna exclaims, then tries to play it off like it’s nothing.

“What’s wrong?” Emily asks, alarmed.

“Work stuff,” Hanna shrugs, trying to slide the phone casually into her pocket and out of Emily’s sight . “My boss thinks ferrets are the new mink.”

“Hanna, you got fired,” Emily points out, still feeling shaky. “What is it? What’s really going on?”

Wordlessly, and with a look on her face that’s a mixture of pity and regret, Hanna holds up the message for Emily to see. It’s a picture of Alison and Dr. Rollins, under the twinkle lights in Aria’s backyard, kissing and holding up a piece of paper with “Just Married” scribbled in red marker. 

Emily leans back on the couch, feels her entire body go cold.

“Are you okay?” Hanna asks, full of concern. “Because if you wanna eat a whole tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream and watch sad black and white movies, I’m your girl. I’ll get tissues.”

Emily shakes her head, not trusting her voice.

“Chocolate peanut butter?” Hanna offers, brandishing the loft's fancy remote. “And whatever movies you want! Zombies? Kate Upton? Lesbian porn?”

“Thanks,” Emily says. “I just want to get some sleep.”

“Okay,” Hanna says, uncertainly. “If you change your mind, though-”

“Got it,” Emily says. “Thanks.”

She waits until she hears Hanna snoring softly in the bedroom, then changes into her sweats and running sneakers as quietly as she can.

She shouldn’t be running alone at night. There’s a new psychopath after them, and she just had surgery last week. 

She doesn’t care. She runs past Alison’s house.

She thinks of her phone, useless and shattered, a mirror for how she feels right now.

She runs for as long as it takes for the sweat to drip down from her forehead, rivulets running down her face, into her eyes. She keeps running, as fast as she can, until she’s not even sure whether her face is wet from her sweat or her tears.

She turns off down an old access road into the woods, feels her way in the dark, guesses at the direction until she finds the clearing. 

She sits down on the kissing rock and screams.

\----

Hanna’s bridal shower is two days later. She offers to reschedule, or let Emily beg off.

“You could pretend to break your leg,” Hanna suggests.

But Hanna’s her best friend. Emily can’t not go.

Of course the party ends in mayhem, the guests rushing for the door as Hanna and Ashley race Aria’s ambulance to the hospital. Spencer ghosts without a word, leaving Emily and Mona standing in the wreckage, surrounded by broken glass and charred party debris.

It was Mona who managed to unhack the ipad, dial the Smart Loft down to a non-lethal setting.

Emily gets a broom, starts to sweep up the worst of the mess. To her surprise, Mona gets some spray cleaner from beneath the sink, grabs a roll of paper towels and starts clearing up the streaks of cake frosting and spilled wine from the hardwood.

They work in silence, mostly, until Emily’s emptying her third dustpan into the garbage.

“Tell me the truth,” she says. “You knew every single answer to that game, didn’t you?”

Mona rolls her eyes, looking like she used to back in the day, back when she was always glued to Hanna’s side.

“Of course,” she admits. “They met when a friend set Jordan up for some charity ball with a model that Hanna was dressing. He came to pick up the model, took one look at Hanna, and told the model he was terribly sorry, but his pet kangaroo was ill and he wouldn’t be able to go. Hanna laughed, but you know models, they’re dumb as rocks. So the bimbo left and he took Hanna out instead.”

“He proposed on his yacht, off the coast of Hawaii, on a night that was so clear they could see more stars than sky,” Mona continues. “She thought he was joking until he pulled out the ring.”

 

“It’s a good story,” Emily says.

“Yeah,” Mona sighs. “It is.”

She bends down, motions for Emily to help her try to scrub the Aria-shaped scorch mark off the floor. It was Spencer who was fast enough to tackle her, body slam her into a forced stop, drop, and roll.

“You were right, you know,” Mona says, scrubbing hard against the soot stain. “I should have told her how I felt.”

“That was a long time ago,” Emily says quietly, frowning as she tears off another paper towel.

“Was it?” Mona asks. “Was it for you?”

“Maybe not. Maybe I just like to think so.”

Mona nods, keeps scrubbing at a mark that’s probably never going away.

“What does it feel like?” Mona asks. “Ali being married?”

“I don’t know,” Emily says. “Like the end of the world, I guess.”

She stands up, not wanting to talk about it anymore. Mona takes the hint, starts filling a new bag of trash.

They carry everything down to the dumpster together.

“Is there any more?” Mona asks.

“No, that’s it,” Emily replies. “You didn’t have to stay. I could have done this myself.”

“It seems whatever I do ends up this way,” Mona says, her voice almost tearful. “Good intentions that look like trash.”

Emily sees that she’s holding Hanna’s blackened Dream Wedding album.

“Sorry,” she says, meaning it as an apology for everything. For not having grabbed Mona by the scruff of her neck seven years ago, insisted she should tell Hanna or Emily would do the telling for her. For the burned construction paper that Mona’s running her fingers over, for the memories it contains of how Mona probably imagined marrying Hanna herself. For it being way too late for any of it to matter anymore.

Emily pushes one of the garbage bags deeper in, feels a dull ache in her shoulder. It matches the one in her heart.

“There’s something I should have told you,” she says, turning to Mona. “I spent so much time being afraid of you. But I think I was really afraid of being like you. Afraid that maybe I understood a little too well. What made you - do what you did.”

“Is that why you kept your distance from Alison?” Mona asks. “All this time?”

“That’s part of it,” Emily acknowledges. “A big part.”

“Well,” Mona says, in a voice that crackles with both sarcasm and remorse, “No wonder you always hated me. Put it on my tab, then. I’m sorry I ruined your life, Emily.”

“No,” Emily insists, putting a hand on Mona’s arm. “That’s not what I meant. At all. I just, I was trying to say -”

“Don’t you dare,” Mona cuts her off. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me!”

“I was trying to say - I don’t think you’re a bad person,” Emily says, though the words come out sounding angrier than she intended.

“Oh,” Mona says, her voice much smaller now. “Really?”

Emily nods and squeezes her arm before letting go.

“That might be the nicest thing anyone has said to me in years,” Mona admits, before instantly snapping back to her usual persona. “The nicest thing that wasn’t about my hair. Or my shoes. Or my margaritas.”

She starts striding towards her car. “Are you coming?” she tosses back at Emily over her shoulder.

“Huh?” Emily says, confused. “I’m going to the hospital to check on Aria. My car’s right here.”

“Not anymore,” Mona declares. “There are things you need to know, Emily. Things we can’t discuss here. Get in the car.”

“Mona, what’s this about?”

Mona dangles her key chain in front of Emily, impatiently. Pink dice rattle, coming up snake eyes.

Emily gets in the car.

\-----

If Emily had been driving, she would have taken them to the outskirts of town. To one of the abandoned factories that hulk like sleeping sentries past the edges of Rosewood’s rougher neighborhoods, maybe to an empty construction site littered with scrap metal but no workers at this hour. 

Mona has a different plan. She blows past the edge of town and keeps driving until they’re halfway to Philadelphia. She pulls into the parking lot of a strip mall, leads Emily towards a bar called The King of Clubs, its door sandwiched between a steakhouse and a dry cleaners.

Club music blares from within, a wall of sound that hits the moment they open the door. The clientele seems to be made up entirely of shirtless gay guys. Mona hustles Emily through the crowd and into the tiny women’s bathroom. Emily has to give her credit, for as omniscient as ‘A’ seems to be, the chances of being overheard here are virtually non-existent. 

For the first time, she considers whether it might take an ‘A’ to beat an ‘A’.

\----

It’s an hour later, and they’re sitting at the bar, Emily still processing the news that Mona was the one who called Charlotte from the Two Crows. Wondering if she should take her word for it that Charlotte never showed, that Mona’s not the killer.

“I have to tell Spencer,” she says. “And the others. Unless you want to.”

“They won’t believe me,” Mona shrugs. “Besides, I’m not up for a Hastings style interrogation right now. This outfit is designer, and the care label warns against high heat and waterboarding.”

“Okay,” Emily agrees, taking a sip of the raspberry vodka drink Mona ordered for her. She stays quiet for awhile, watching the other patrons, thinking about Charlotte. All the ways that Alison tried to be like Cece, all the ways Hanna tried to be like Alison.

“Hanna might not go through with it,” she tells Mona. “She blows me off whenever I bring up bridesmaids dresses.”

“And Alison might not be married forever,” Mona replies. “Rollins looks like an appetizer to me.”

“Like cheese sticks?” Emily asks, confused.

“Like empty calories to tide you over until the main course arrives.” 

Emily smirks a little, liking the way that sounds.

“You shouldn’t have worried,” Mona tells her. “I was sick, Emily. It was as much about chemical imbalances in my brain as it was about loving Hanna. Thank goodness one of those things was fixable.”

“I know,” Emily says. “It was more like, Hanna never intended to hurt you, you know? She’s Hanna, she’ll crawl through broken glass on her hands and knees for anyone she loves. But Ali - she could be, can be - ruthless. If she knew she had the power to turn someone into a weapon, even if it was someone she cared about -”

“She might have done it,” Mona concludes, her face a mask of sympathy. “I get it. But she’s a different person now. You’re a different person now. You’re stronger than you were at fourteen, Emily. Much stronger.”

“She is a different person now. A married person,” Emily says, her voice sounding bitter, even to herself. “Which leaves us both in the same boat.”

Mona looks at her intently, almost without blinking, like she’s studying a chess board and carefully considering her next move. It’s disconcerting. Emily feels herself blushing a little, which makes Mona smile ever so slightly. 

Emily sees Mona moving towards her, so slowly it seems like it takes years for her to rise up off her barstool and wrap a warm hand around the back of Emily’s neck. And then Mona’s lips are on hers, smooth and fruity and kissing her fiercely.

Emily kisses back, surprising herself. She pulls Mona closer, and the feel of the smaller girl’s body pressing against her feels like the answer to a question she didn’t even know she had. Mona’s tongue is probing inside Emily’s mouth and Emily’s back is against the bar and Mona’s hands seem to be everywhere at once and this might be the first time in her adult life that Emily’s ever kissed a girl without wishing it could be Alison. Mona’s kisses leave no room for other thought, unless it’s the thought of getting out of the bar and off to somewhere more private.

Which is Mona’s signal, as if she can actually read minds, to lead them out of the bar, back to the car. She laughs as she unlocks it.

“What is it?” Emily asks. “What’s funny?”

“I’m laughing at myself,” Mona tells her. “I’ve spent the past five years taking blondes home from bars.”

Emily knows where this is headed, wonders if - as sometimes still happens - she’ll accidentally call out Ali’s name. Wonders if Mona will be pretending she’s Hanna. 

“Well,” Emily says, sliding into the passenger seat and resting a hand on Mona’s thigh. “It turns out we have a lot in common.”


End file.
